


Don't Go

by sarcastic_fina



Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-14
Updated: 2014-02-14
Packaged: 2018-01-12 08:07:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1183905
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarcastic_fina/pseuds/sarcastic_fina
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When the choice is handed out, it isn't Oliver's to make. Slade asks Felicity who she'll choose: herself or Oliver. As far as hard choices go, this is actually pretty easy for her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Choice

He stared at her from where he was kneeling on the cold, hard, cement floor, arms bound behind his back. His hood was lowered, blood seeping from a cut above his eye, his cheek swollen from various blows. The way he was leaning told her he had a broken rib, maybe more than one, and she could only imagine the plethora of bruising that was blooming under his leathers. 

"Oliver," she whispered brokenly, shaking her head. She inhaled thickly as tears tripped down her cheeks.

Time was running out. She had to make a decision, and soon.

His breathing was heavy; from his injuries or his worry, she wasn’t sure which. But he was staring up at her, exhausted and terrified. Sweat dripped down his face, cutting through the dirt that collected on his skin.

"Don’t," he pleaded. "Don’t go with him."

Her breath hitched, voice trembling as she answered, “I have to.” 

He squeezed his eyes shut. “Felicity, listen to me…” He shook his head and looked up at her. “If you go with him, I’ll never see you again. He’ll hide you or kill you, I don’t know. But he’ll never let me get to you.” He fought against the chains around his wrists. “He’s trying to get back at me for Shado. You have to understand! He’s doing this to hurt me. If he takes you, I… Felicity,  _please_ , please don’t go.” 

She gripped her hands together and tugged on her fingers. “He’ll kill you if I don’t.”

He stared at her, his eyes bright with unshed tears. Gritting his teeth, he admitted, “Losing you is what’s going to kill me.” 

Felicity closed her eyes, tears spilling over. “I can’t let him hurt you anymore.” She started backing up, toward the metal door behind her. 

"Stop! Felicity…" he cried, his voice cracking. 

Her chest was heaving as she looked at him, so scared and lost. Her heart broken. She walked forward then, moving to kneel in front of him, and she wrapped her arms around his neck, cradling his head on her shoulder. He buried his face in her hair, against her neck, and he sighed.

"Don’t let go," he whispered, pressing closer to her. 

Felicity stroked her hands down his neck, over and over, fingers sifting through his hair. Eventually, he began to relax, resting more of his weight on her, letting himself sink against the solid comfort of her.

She held onto him for what felt like forever, but still wasn’t long enough. 

And then the door opened, creaking and clanging, and she felt Oliver go still against her, his entire body tensed. 

"Well, isn’t this a pretty picture…"

Oliver’s eyes narrowed into a glare.

"Sorry to break it up, but I’ll need an answer… What’ll it be, Miss Smoak? The choice is yours… Save his life and sacrifice yours, or let him suffer? Personally, I’m partial to the latter." 

She swallowed thickly and began to stand, her knees wobbling underneath her. 

"Felicity." She looked down at him, his battered face in her hands. He stared at her searchingly. "Felicity, please." 

She bent to kiss his forehead, his furrowed brow, the bridge of his nose, and finally his lips, pressing her mouth to his in a desperate and final goodbye. Stroking her fingers back over his temple, she took a step back. 

"I’ll go with you," she said, but kept her eyes on Oliver’s.

"No," he told her. 

Slade stepped forward to take her elbow. 

“ _No!_ " Oliver yelled. 

Felicity didn’t fight him, letting him pull her back and toward the door. But she did keep her head turned; she kept her eyes on Oliver as long as she could. Memorizing every feature of his face so she could hold onto him for as long as she had. 

"Slade, stop!  _Please!”_ Oliver pushed up, struggling to get to his feet, and pulled at the chains as he let out an angry roar. “ _Felicity!”_

And then the door was closed behind them and she could see him no more. 

Angry turned to anguish so quickly, but he still said her name with all the reverence a person could possess. 

She knew it was the right choice, even if he never forgave her. He should know that if losing her was the worst thing he could go through, that it was the same for her. In the end, the choice she made was selfish. Oliver would live, and she… Well, she didn’t really know.

"He’ll find you, you know," she said to Slade, lifting her chin stubbornly. "And he’ll kill you for this."

Slade grinned down at her, a savage gleam in his eyes. “Oh, I know. And I’ll welcome it when it comes. But for now…  _I win_.”


	2. Aftermath

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oliver deals with the aftermath.

If he closed his eyes, he could still smell her hair, still feel her pressed up against him, her fingers stroking down his neck. She’d left,  _willingly_ , to save him.  _Him_. He could have laughed. All he’d ever done was destroy things, but she believed he was different. She believed he was  _good_.

When he’d taken Felicity on as a teammate, as a  _partner_ , he’d thought he was the stronger of the two. She was sweet and soft and  _naive_. But he knew now how wrong he’d been. She was all of those things, yes, but she wasn’t weak in any way. She’d looked Slade Wilson in the eye and she hadn’t flinched. She looked at death and sacrifice and she’d accepted. All to save him. 

If there was a hero in this story, it wasn’t him. 

It was her. 

Tears bit at his eyes, but he was so tired. Tired of crying and losing and of the ache that bit at the edges of his heart. He felt hollow. The space in front of him, beside him,  _inside_ him, that she’d once filled was now completely empty. That little beam of light, like a peak of sunshine as night gave way to morning, was no longer visible through the darkness that crowded around him, threatening to consume every broken, fragile piece of him. 

When John finally found him, he was empty, staring at the floor, mentally and physically exhausted.

Blood dripped from around his crusted wrists. The manacles had torn is skin, never giving, never loosening; a constant reminder that he could do  _nothing_.

“We’ll find her,” Digg promised, lifting Oliver from the ground, throwing his arm around his neck while he half-carried him out of the warehouse to a waiting car. “It’s not over yet, Oliver.”

But as Oliver slumped into the backseat of the car, those words seemed empty when Roy wondered, “Where’s Barbie?”

_Gone_ , he wanted to say.  _She’s gone_.

A tear tripped down his cheek and he squeezed his hands into fists, swallowing back the rage and loss that threatened to drown him.

His eyes opened then, determination sweeping over him; a surge of denial filling him up to his lungs. Until there was a body, he refused to believe he’d lost her. No, he’d thought too many people were dead only to find out different. Just one more miracle, that was all he needed.

_Let her be alive_ , he hoped.  _I need her to be alive_.

 …

When a week passed and there was no body, his hope grew.

When two passed and she was still nowhere to be found, the team began to  _lose_ hope. 

But Oliver didn’t; he knew Slade. He would have wanted Oliver to see the body, to know that she was gone. To make him fell that helplessness as he was forced to bury her.

So, she had to be out there.  _Somewhere_.

And he was going to find her.


	3. Thorns

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Felicity learns the outcome of her choice isn't what she expected.

He didn’t kill her.

Days passed and he never killed her.

It was confusing at first. Felicity didn’t understand the point. He’d had so many opportunities, but instead he just kept her with him as he traveled the globe. This wasn’t what she’d had in mind when she wanted to see the world; trapped inside jets, smuggled into town cars, hidden away in hotel rooms, watching the world become nothing more than something outside a window.

The one time she tried to ask for help, to get a maid to send out some kind of signal to Oliver or Digg, she had to watch Slade kill the poor, confused woman.

“Maybe I haven’t made myself clear… You do anything to contact him, you try to escape, I will hunt down every single person on your little team and I will kill. them.  _all_.”

He spent more than an hour telling her how he’d do it. He’d start with Roy. Poor, angry, desperate for some kind of calling, Roy. The boy might have mirakuru in him, but he wasn’t as trained as Slade was. He didn’t know how to control himself. So, he was far from a match against the man who carried vengeance like a shield.

"Maybe I’ll use that pretty little girlfriend against him, huh? Oh, it’ll tear the kid up, but it’s better than that. Two birds, one stone. Both his love and his sister dead, that’d eat Oliver up even worse." He watched her for a reaction; he so enjoyed it when she got upset. 

Then he told her how he’d kill John, slow and methodic. Being a soldier himself, Slade told her he’d use every tool in the book to break Digg down. And he took great glee out of the anger that made her eyes tear up, the stubborn set of her chin, and how quick she was to snap, “John Diggle is twice the man you could  _ever_  be!”

But it was Oliver that made her cringe, made her crumble in on herself.

“Oh, I’m going to make him bleed… But you know what’s really killing him, hm?” He reached out to stroke a hand down her teary face. “He thinks I killed you. He probably thinks about it every night. Goes over every awful detail. He’ll think it was slow, that you cried out for him as you were dying, desperately screaming his name as you withered away. I don’t even have to be there or do anything. Right now, he’s tearing himself apart, piece by piece, and when there’s nothing left,  _that_ is when I’ll finally end his  _miserable_ life.”

Looking into his one remaining eye, dark with nothing but cold, empty fury, Felicity believed him.

So, she never tried to escape again.

 …

After three months, she’d had enough.

“Why?” she asked. “Why haven’t you killed me?”

He took his time, cutting off a slice of his steak as he raised an eyebrow at her. He slid the succulent meat between his lips and chewed, leaning back in his chair as he watched her squirm across from him. “Would you like me to change that?” he asked, before folding his napkin and dabbing at his mouth.

Her eyes narrowed. “I want answers.”

He grinned then, a savage show of pearly white teeth. “What did you say to me, that day this all began?”

She frowned. “That he would come for you, and he’d kill you.” She raised her chin. “I stand by that.”

“Exactly.” He laid his napkin down and picked up his glass of red wine, admiring the color for a moment. “Oliver has always felt things too deeply. Oh, he tries not to. Tries to play the unaffected little bastard, and he does a pretty good job of convincing people he’s just that, but I know him. He loves you. And Oliver would do _anything_ for the people he loves… Right now he’s destroying himself. He’s somewhere between all-consuming rage and desperate grief… I know how that feels.” He shook his head as something raw tried to take over.

“He’ll tear himself apart tracking me down. Exhaust himself chasing empty leads. Push himself to the brink of death for any scrap of hope. And when he finally finds me, after all that work, all that desperation to avenge you…” He grinned. “He’s going to find you here, with me, alive and well. And just when he starts to get his hope back, just when he thinks there’s something to live for,  _that_  is when I’m going to kill you, Miss Smoak.”

He sipped his wine and let it settle on his tongue before humming. “Delicious.” He nodded toward her glass. “Try it. I know how much you love red wine.”

Felicity’s stomach turned.

For a moment, she considered wrapping her hand around the steak knife in front of her and taking out his remaining eye. But Slade was faster than she could ever be, and he would anticipate it. So, when she picked up her knife and she saw his shoulders tense, she merely smiled. “When he kills you, I’m going to cry…”

He raised an eyebrow.

“With relief.”

He smirked and knocked his glass against hers in cheers. “I’m going to miss you when it’s over, Miss Smoak. You bring a certain energy to a room.”

“If it’s not full of resentment, you’re reading it wrong.”

Slade’s deep chuckle choked the air around her.

While she put on a show of confidence for him, inside she was falling apart.

Later that night, after he left her in her hotel room with no access to any computers or a phone, a guard stationed outside her door, she moved to the window, staring out over the landscape below. He never told her where they were going but sometimes she could tell. Slade was a man of means and he refused to lower himself to dingy motels. No, he picked the best of the best because he could afford the luxury. Sometimes that luxury paid for a great view, supplying her with well-known landmarks. She didn’t have to be a genius to recognize the London Eye in the distance, lit up as night fell, moving slowly.

She pressed a hand to the window and felt a tear slip down her cheek. Now that she knew Slade’s plan, she knew there were options. She could push the window open, here and now, and leap from the sill. Oliver would know she was dead then for sure, but at least he wouldn’t have to watch it happen. At least then he wouldn’t feel that hope swell back up inside him. He could lay her ghost to rest. Slade’s plan would be ruined. Sure, he’d still have won in some way. Oliver would still grieve, still want his vengeance, but it wouldn’t be to the same degree as it would if Slade killed her in front of him.

But as she stood there, looking down at the street below, she decided her life and death would not be decided by someone else. Whether Oliver came for her or not, she was going to live through this. She would kill Slade herself if she had to.

Turning around, she decided that was exactly what she was going to do.

If he thought he had a wilting flower on his hands, he was just too arrogant to see the thorns.


End file.
